Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.—An extract from “The Second Coming” by W.B. Yeats.

Why did the Left Fail the Covid Test So Badly?

Note: Contrary to this site’s policy of not republishing work from other sites, which has been in effect for several years, this exception is a must. It is almost impossible for me to find something with which I agree so thoroughly, and what follows is the rarest of exceptions. It consists of exactly what I […]

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Nuremberg, Covid, and Anthropology: Never Again

Today, August 20, 2022, marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the trials of medical professionals at Nuremberg. Central principles and fundamental rights were enshrined as a result of the trials, which were then encoded in international law, domestic laws, and the codes of ethics followed by institutional review boards in US universities, the […]

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Costa Rica: Democracy Takes a Stand Against the Vax Junta

Rodrigo Chaves, the central protagonist in this drama, has been cast by Costa Rican media as a renegade. One paper spoke of how he “shook the country by eliminating the mandatory use of the mask and incidentally, questioning the demand for vaccination against COVID-19”. Immediately accused of “populism” by the media (because being for the […]

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COVID-19: THE SYSTEM, Part 2

In Part 1 we ended with the documentary’s discussion of the type of business model that has been created around COVID-19, or to match the title of the film, a system. The system consists of interlocking and mutually enforcing actors, institutions, and processes: Government, working in tandem with establishment scientists, transnational business interests and the […]

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COVID-19: THE SYSTEM, Part 1

On March 11, 2020, when the World Health Organization announced that COVID-19’s spread was now a pandemic, and on March 13, 2020, when here in Quebec a total lockdown went into effect, most people would have had many questions. Then at some point the very act of questioning, of finding certain alleged facts and explanations […]

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The World Health Organization (WHO): A Problem of Trust

Over the past twenty years or so, what has been the record of the World Health Organization when it comes to major public health crises? Has the WHO itself invented at least some of those crises? Was there in fact a H1N1 “pandemic”? What counts as a “pandemic,” according to the WHO? What are the relationships between the WHO and scientists, large pharmaceutical transnational corporations, powerful member states, and private donors? …

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Global Giants: American Empire and Transnational Capital

Review of Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips (Introduction by William I. Robinson). New York: Seven Stories Press, 2018. LCCN 2018017493; ISBN 9781609808716 (pbk.); ISBN 9781609808723 (ebook); 353 pps. Giants: The Global Power Elite, by Peter M. Phillips, Professor of Political Sociology at Sonoma State University, opens with a stated intention of following […]

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American Exceptionalism, American Innocence

Review of American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—from the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror. By Roberto Sirvent and Danny Haiphong. Foreword by Ajamu Baraka. Afterword by Glen Ford. 256 pages. Published: April 2, 2019. New York: Skyhorse Publishing Inc. ISBN: 9781510742369. Hardcover, $24.99 US; e-Book, $16.99 US. We […]

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Book Review: Afghanistan Post–2014—Misreading Afghanistan’s Crypto-coloniality

Review of: Afghanistan Post-2014: Power Configurations and Evolving Tragectories. Edited by Rajen Harshe’ and Dhananjay Tripathi. (New Delhi: Routledge), 2016, pp. xix+248. The colonial and postcolonial writings about of Afghanistan are marked by the absence of a systematic and critical awareness about the country as an offspring and dependency of Western colonialism. The ethnographic, historic […]

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